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Bette Midler poured her heart and soul into this story of a pair of entertainers who repeatedly took time from their careers to entertain U.S. troops at war, from World War II to Vietnam--and it sank like a stone at the box office. Granted, it's corny and emotionally over the top. But there are strong emotions at play here in the tale of an unlikely team of singer and comedian (played by Midler and James Caan), who are brought together for a reunion show in their dotage. As they nervously anticipate seeing each other for the first time in years, they are flooded with memories of their earlier days as a hot show-biz couple whose own troubles always took second place to their patriotic urge to buoy our boys in uniform. Some say this was a veiled film version of the Martha Raye story; Midler gives it her all and Caan isn't half-bad. But director Mark Rydell lays on the schmaltz so thickly at times that it overpowers the tougher material.
--Marshall Fine
Bette Midler plays Dixie Leonard, a singer-dancer-comedienne who becomes famous in the early days of the Second World War when she teams up with an established star named Eddie Sparks (James Caan, who gives the movie's best performance). Framed by an awards ceremony at which Dixie and Eddie are to be honored for their many years of entertaining troops on U.S.O. tours, the story is told in a series of flashbacks. Most of the big sequences take place in wartime: in London and North Africa during the Second World War; in Korea in the early fifties; in Vietnam in 1969. This structure allows Midler to perform musical numbers from different eras and to attempt the acting tour de force of playing a character at several distinct stages of life. She piles persona on top of persona on top of persona for two and a half hours in an effort to overwhelm us with the sheer force and infinite variety of herself: she is the world. The movie (which was produced by her own company) is meant to serve as the Portable Bette-a boxed set of Midler moments. In the Second World War sequences, the picture has a certain trashy charm, but the Korea and Vietnam scenes feature "realistic" combat footage and glib anti-war sentiments. Dixie, weeping over dying soldiers, just seems to get nobler and nobler as the bodies accumulate around her. The film itself has a kind of life-achievement-award feel to it: when it's over, the words "a great entertainer and a wonderful human being" seem to have acquired a new, unprecedentedly berserk meaning. Bette Midler begins as a red-hot mama and winds up as Mother Courage. And this vanity production is such an ordeal that it turns into a demonstration of a startling thesis: war is bad, but entertainment is hell. Also with George Segal, Christopher Rydell, and Arye Gross. Directed by Mark Rydell, from a screenplay by Marshall Brickman, Neal Jimenez, and Lindy Laub. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
